While reviewing footage for her PhD research, Polish Academy of Sciences ecologist Robin Wijnands spotted something pretty wild. A camera set up in eastern Poland’s Bialowieza Primeval Forest recorded wolves (Canis lupus) attacking a European bison (Bison bonasus) herd.
The video, shot in September 2025 and described in a study published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, starts with five wolves entering the frame. Three bison cows chase the wolves, unintentionally leaving a newborn calf vulnerable. The wolves then attack the calf, biting its neck and attempting to drag it away. That’s when two cows come to its rescue and charge towards them. The wolves try to catch the calf a second time, but this time the entire herd surrounds the calf, and the wolves give up on their attack.
“We captured this event purely by chance, which makes it even more special,” Wijnands tells Popular Science. Wijnands is also a co-author on of the new study, and her research monitoring large mammal behaviour and activity in the Bialowieza Primeval Forest. The footage both excited and surprised the researchers.
“It raised a lot of questions: Why would the wolves go for a difficult prey like the European bison? How often do predation attempts actually occur and how often are they successful?” says Wijnands.
A search through the available scientific literature revealed that there are actually many historical reports of predation on European bison. However, only a few of these recent attempts have happened recently and none have documented evidence of a wolf grabbing an individual.
The study raises interesting questions about the re-introduction and conservation of European bison. The species were hunted to extinction by 1919, but they were reintroduced in Poland’s forests in the early 1950s. Today, about 6,200 European bison live in the wild and they are often described as the “king of the forest” and considered a non-prey species.
“Right now, most reintroduction initiatives do not seem to include predation risk or the presence of predators in habitat suitability analyses,” Wijnands says.“ We think that it should be considered in such analyses, as it could potentially affect small reintroduced populations.”
“However, even if predation occurs more frequently than we think, we do not expect a steep decline in European bison populations,” she adds, “especially when easier and more accessible prey are available.”
Wijnands hopes the study opens the door for more research on bison-wolf interactions and their possible consequences, though she also notes that the work focuses on just one interaction and no definitive conclusions can be drawn from it.
“We mainly wanted to share this rare and special observation and show that there are still many unknowns regarding European bison-wolf interactions,” she says.
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